RLUS3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Rural land can generate a variety of benefits. Some are easily seen, some are not; some are felt individually, some collectively. For example, food and timber are highly visible and can be bought and sold by individuals; attractive landscapes or a sense of community identity are harder to define and are shared collectively amongst members of society. Moreover, many benefits are inter-linked. For example, depending on how they are managed, agricultural and forestry production can enhance or impair environmental quality and influence local income and employment opportunities.
In the context of sustainable development, an ecosystem services perspective can help to portray the various types of benefits accruing to different groups of people. Specifically, four classes of benefit are suggested: "provisioning", which are the traditionally recognised, more tangible benefits of commodity production; "regulating" and "supporting", which relate primarily to environmental benefits; and "cultural", which encompass various social benefits. Importantly, this classification also recognises inter-dependencies between different benefits that lead to the conflicts and complementarities highlighted in RLUS2, and offers the possibility of framing discussions about who the providers and recipients of benefits are and how they interact.
Whilst markets exist to match providers and recipients for the more tangible benefits, they are generally missing for most others. This means that managing land to deliver such benefits is not automatically rewarded and the level and mix of benefits is different to that desired by society. In addition, the distribution of benefits across different groups in society - such as producers and consumers or urban and rural citizens - may not be as desired either. Hence land use can raise concerns about both the efficiency with which benefits are achieved and the equity of their distribution.
In such circumstances, the public sector has a role to play in helping people and the resources that they manage to adjust in order to deliver a more desirable level, mix and distribution of benefits. This can involve helping existing markets to operate better and/or overcoming the absence of markets - of addressing market imperfections and market failures (the latter being externalities and public goods). In seeking to achieve this, the public sector has a variety of policy instruments at its disposal. In most cases, these act through trying to influence the decisions and actions of private land managers, whether as individuals, members of supply chains, members of commercial or voluntary organisations and/or members of rural communities.
This highlights the pivotal position of rural people with respect to land use policy. That is, given their location, those that live and work in rural areas are intimately linked to rural land use both as recipients of benefits and as influencers of benefits that are felt locally and further afield. For example, local residents and local businesses may enjoy the quality of life associated with attractive landscapes, but some of them may also influence the existence and maintenance of such a landscape that is enjoyed by others.
Although the range of policy instruments available to influence land use is extremely wide, it can be split into six main classes: information provision; capacity building; using market incentives; creating markets; classic regulation; and state control. Whilst a direct matching of these classes to desired outcomes would be attractive, available evidence here and abroad suggests that this is too simplistic. Rather, whilst each class has advantages and disadvantages their appropriateness is highly context dependent. That is, the "best" instrument can vary depending on both the policy objective but also the circumstances within which it is applied.
For example, a need to achieve uniform minimum standards is often better served by regulation than voluntary responses to market incentives, yet the latter can provide greater flexibility and innovation than regulation or state control. Equally, legacy effects of past policies and political acceptability can also exert an influence on instrument choice.
Moreover, it is increasingly apparent that it is the mix of instruments rather than the use of a single instrument that is important in determining policy effectiveness. For example, how well information provision and capacity building are used to support market incentives or regulatory controls - a point that links strongly to findings in RLUS1 regarding the motivations and behaviours of land managers. Examples of most instruments are currently deployed in Scotland, although some are dictated by EU or international obligations rather than domestic choices, and more use could perhaps be made of some of the other instruments.
Given the possibilities for both complementarities and conflicts between different types of benefit, it is unsurprising that calls for closer integration of land use policy are often made. However, such calls encompass both strategic and practical implementation issues. For the latter, many aspects relate to the effort - the transaction costs - required to engage with bureaucratic processes and (although further improvements can always be made) are already being addressed under the general "better regulation" agenda and more specific initiatives such as SEARS or responses to the Cook review of the SRDP.
With respect to specific classes of instrument, in the face of numerous drivers of change and evolving expectations placed upon land use, the role of information provision and capacity building policy assumes greater importance. In particular, land managers and the communities within which they live and work need to be equipped with the skills and confidence to adapt.
This implies higher levels of funding, but also possibly different modes of facilitation and engagement with the public sector. Examples of existing best practice within different parts of the public sector could usefully be built upon in this regard, although the capacity of public sector bodies to adapt and to engage is also relevant here - suggesting a need to consider internal capacity building alongside its deployment for external land managers and communities.
Related to this, a commonly expressed desire for greater flexibility of policies to recognise variation in local circumstances and priorities means that the organisational capacity of local communities and governance systems will become increasingly important, and may entail greater inclusion of wider rural interests than land managers alone. Maintaining accountability for public expenditure and limiting administrative costs may be challenging under a system of regionally differentiated policies.
The uncertain nature and future of support measures under the CAP, notably the SFP and LFASS, can dominate policy discussions and inhibit the development of both more innovative instrument mixes and closer integration with other policy areas, notably forestry and rural communities. Further CAP reform and budget reductions may force changes in this respect, as may continuing pressure for market liberalisation and deregulation.
At a more strategic level, synergies and tensions between different policy areas - such as agriculture, forestry, renewable energy, flood management and rural communities - often remain implicit rather than explicit. International experience suggests that translating welcome high-level statements within, for example, the Government Economic Strategy and National Performance Framework or the Climate Change Act and Delivery Plan into improved integration gains will require on-going political commitment to maintain some stability of policy signals (which is crucially important for land use activities with long production cycles) but also appropriate processes for acknowledging conflicts and complementarities, valuing options and agreeing priorities. That is, since it is not generally feasible to meet all possible objectives simultaneously, trade-offs have to be made and some interests disappointed.
Given the number of competing interests in rural land use, this will require extensive stakeholder involvement, but also improved interactions between (and within) different parts of the public sector in terms of, for example, how policy impacts are assessed and monitored and how responsibility for decision making is shared.